What is prema?

Someone asked, What is prema?

Big expert, I thought, what the hell do I know?

What is prema? I once thought I knew,

or at least thought I knew the general direction I was headed

some silicon love story, decorated with spiritual decorations,

a Brahman realization with sexual overtones,

the best of both worlds. It seemed like a slam dunk.

I am the big expert, I have been going from the trite to the triter.

All you need is love. It seems so easy, just love for God's sake.

But we hold a secret, some of us, me the most,

that we really think "love" means "being loved."

It gets lost in the translation. And once lost,

trapped in the forest of male ego,

it searches behind the ever burgeoning weeds of rationality,

and prepares for an epiphany of some sort

to come whirling down from the creepers

like flowers. And the answer to "what is love?"

will be found written in one, like a fortune cookie.

And the answer will be as trite as the answer in a fortune cookie,

"Love and you will be loved."

What is love?

Can I cry my answer in wordless tears?

Can I silently awaken you to the pain in my heart

that cries with unfulfilled fulfillment?

What is love? I seek in the kama bija,

searching in the svadhishthana

I draw the essence of my desire and draw it upward

with my breath and try to pierce the skull

and in my one-pointed mind behold the object

of my worship, sitting on a lotus

sharing sidelong glances and glowing like

ten million suns their love cascading through the universe

touching every atom, every molecule, every creature

in greater or lesser manifestations

and taking this form, for me, for me alone,

and for me to share with someone, with someone

to love by giving this vision, to share this vision

to melt into this vision with the tears of surrender.

And I will cry out in a pure heart

calling out calling out their names

and dancing like a fool as sometimes I laugh--

hahahahahaaaa hahahahahaaaaaaa!

What is love? I will not dance alone!!!

Let me hold this vision before you 

and sing sweetly the holy names.

What is love?

Love cannot live alone.

If love comes to you in your loneliness, you must take it.

You must. Otherwise you are an offender to Love.

No other way to say it. But once Love strikes a man

it seems that her business is to run the damn'd male ego

like a piece of sugar cane through the press

until it runs torrents of juice,

which is really the blood of your false sense of self,

turned sweet through the crushing,

and conjures up the true best of yourself

and will not rest until, through love alone,

she has accomplished her task.

And the gratitude for that love is the impetus to love,

to become a lover, a true lover,

and not one who, bee-like, flits from one flower to another,

but saint-like, plunges into the depths of the Other

with total abandon, doing whatever is necessary,

whatever apparent abasement She demands

to be granted the grace of Her favors

the grace of being One with Her

while being fully one's Self.